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I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.

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Saturday, June 5, 2010

I think I’ve started a tradition, and I think it’s a good one. You see, every year my spinning instructor starts dropping hints about his birthday a couple of weeks before it arrives. Last year, I took the hints and decided to bring some cupcakes to class on his big day. Having cupcakes in the spinning room was so wrong, so antithetical, so naughty, and so great. One year later, I had to do it again, and this time, I looked to Demolition Desserts for a completely decadent cupcake. The candy bar cupcake is intended to taste like a Snickers bar. It’s a brown sugar cake with caramel filling, a rich chocolate and peanut butter frosting with roasted peanuts on top, and a sprinkling of sea salt. A woman at the front of the room, near the tray of cupcakes, said: I love smelling chocolate while on a spinning bike. It is very good motivation.

The cakes themselves are made with dark brown sugar and were tender and nicely flavored by themselves. As they baked and cooled, the caramel sauce was made from water, cream of tartar, sugar, and light corn syrup. After that mixture came up to temperature, butter and cream were added, and then it was simmered briefly. I chilled the caramel in the refrigerator before piping it into the cupcakes. The technique is a simple one. You push a one-quarter inch tip on a bag filled with the sauce into the top of a cupcake and squeeze in the caramel until the top of the cake just begins to rise a bit. A little caramel dribbles out on top, and that’s fine. The frosting was next, and that was made with milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, peanut butter, and buttercream frosting. I thought it was a little strange that one of the ingredients in the frosting was a half cup of buttercream frosting from another page in the book. Instead, this recipe could have just called for enough butter, confectioners’ sugar, milk, and vanilla to make up one half cup. At any rate, I mixed a little buttercream separately and added it to the chocolate peanut butter frosting, and the finished product was delicious. That was swirled onto the cupcakes and topped with roasted peanuts and sea salt.

These were definitely adequately decadent. Using a natural peanut butter with no added sugar, the bittersweet chocolate, and a touch of sea salt kept them from being too sweet. And, the chocolate, peanut, and caramel mix was reminiscent of a Snickers bar in the best way. Now, I just need to find a way to propel a tray of cupcakes in front of me when I’m out running.

I personally believe there's something so entirely awesome about eating cupcakes at spin class. But that's the cupcake lover in me talking. I also really like watching the food network while I work out. :P